China Miéville

About the Author

China Miéville is the author of numerous books, including Three Moments of an Explosion, The City & The City, Embassytown, Railsea, and Perdido Street Station. His works have won the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award (three times). He lives and works in London.

Books by China Miéville

Author Essay

China Mieville is still in his twenties, but he’s already forging aformidable writing career. His first novel King Rat was nominated forboth the International Horror Guild Award and The Bram Stoker Prize.Perdido Street Station, his second novel, has generated enormous buzzand extraordinary reviews in the UK, and is currently nominated for boththe Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Science Fiction AssociationAward. Scheduled for a March 2001 release in the States, Perdido StreetStation is a huge, sweeping novel revolving around the fantastical cityof New Crobuzon, a place that Time Out described as "one of the finestcreations in speculative fiction."

To find out what Mieville thinks about when he’s developing alternateworlds, read on.

‘Some seventeen notable empires rose in the Middle Period of Earth.These were the Afternoon Cultures. All but one are unimportant to thisnarrative…’

These are the opening lines of M. John Harrison’s stunning Viriconiumsequence, in which he casually writes the most important rule aboutworld-building that I know. Histories, laws, cultures, aesthetics -worlds – are colossal, and colossally complex. There is no way you canever tell the story of a whole world. No matter how detailed yourtimeline or carefully illustrated your bestiary, you can’t possiblyexplain everything. If something’s not important to the narrative, thendon’t try – there are only so many info-dumps a story can take, and Isave mine for the stuff that the reader has to understand. The rest ofthe strange things, or races, or places – they’re just there. They justhappen. Put them in, describe them, and leave them alone, even if thatleaves the reader uncertain. That’s fine. In fact, it’s good – it’sculture shock. Hopefully it communicates a sense that there is a worldbeyond the book, in which the story occurs, rather than a story with afew fantasy props thrown in.

There are few greater pleasures in Weird Fiction than a really coolmonster, an unusual alien race. Which is why it makes no sense to me tocull your creatures from the list of the usual suspects. Elf, dwarf,centaur – you know the drill.

The best of the fantastic tradition – take Surrealism – is all aboutusing the fantastic to challenge, to alienate, to create a grotesqueriethat keeps the reader surprised. Usually, identikit aliens serve theopposite function, because they’re not alien at all. They’re comforting,because they’re so recognisable. That kind of fantasy isn’t nearlyfantastic enough.

I’m not saying that it’s impossible to write a good, innovative fantasywith elves and dwarfs in it (Michael Swanwick’s The Iron Dragon’sDaughter gives the lie to that). I’m just saying that I can’t do it. Andanyway, half the fun is inventing these creatures – why not take theopportunity to create them from scratch, or plunder mythologies moreunusual than Tolkienesque fairyland? And once you’ve invented your race,remember that race, culture and character are three very differentthings. Few things in fantasy annoy me more than having a particularrace act as a signifier for a particular kind of character. Why areelves all clever and fey? Are there any dwarfs out there who aren’tgruff and good with their hands? And what happens if you’re an orc butyou’re not, you know, evil?

This is just racial stereotyping in fantasyland. And it makes forexplanations as unconvincing as the same activity in the real world. Ofcourse there’ll be cultural differences between different races, butthere again, why would those races be monolithic? Is it really likelythat in your carefully constructed land, two different groups ofwing-kobolds thousands of miles apart are going to be basically thesame? Surely they’ll be as varied as the Aztecs, the !Kung-San and theVictorian British. Just like us, now.

But of course cultures aren’t monolithic even within themselves. Thereare a whole mass of conflicting objective interests and impulsesembedded in each one. Conflict is not usually the result of some DreadDark Lord who is threatening things from the outside. Usually there arequite enough tensions cooking up internally to keep things interesting.Even the nicest ‘Good King’ has to get that palace from somewhere, andmore than likely it’s from where his real-life counterparts got theirs:plunder, sharp metal and the unpaid work of the peasantry. Rememberthat, and your world is likely to be a lot more compelling.

It’s paradoxical, trying to depict a world that’s simultaneouslyconvincing and utterly fantastic. But one idea unites the two impulses:the recognition that things are not neat and tidy or monolithic, butcomplex and contradictory, contingent, constantly suprising and far moreinteresting for all that. That could describe the best and strangestfantasy, and the most hard-headed depiction of reality. That’s why Kafkais a realist, and why we can have it both ways.